Superior has filed a lawsuit in federal court to halt proposed expansion of the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge that opens the door to construction of a four-lane tollway along Indiana Avenue until a more thorough environmental analysis of the highway's impact can be completed.

The town filed the suit and a motion for a preliminary injunction last week, following the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service's determination earlier this month that transferring land on the refuge's eastern edge to the Jefferson Parkway Public Highway Authority would have "no significant impact" on the natural or human environment.

In exchange for the 300-foot right-of-way along Indiana Avenue, the government would receive 617 acres of a parcel known as Section 16 on the west side of the refuge. Fish & Wildlife officials say the land within the expanded boundary, which features rare xeric tallgrass prairie and has habitat suitable for the threatened Preble's meadow jumping mouse, would provide for a critical wildlife transportation corridor to the west.

Superior wants a judge to order that the Fish & Wildlife Service conduct a more comprehensive environmental impact study before it forges ahead with any expansion plans at the 6,240-acre site.

"There are enough unknowns and enough uncertainties that they should be doing an EIS," Timothy Gablehouse, an attorney representing Superior, said Monday.

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Opponents of the four-lane Jefferson Parkway, which would link Colo. 128 in Broomfield to Colo. 93 north of Golden, fear the highway would funnel a high volume of cut-through traffic down McCaslin Boulevard. They also worry that road construction could potentially disturb plutonium that accumulated over the decades the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant operated there.

Superior Trustee Debra Williams, who has long opposed the tollway, contends that by simply conducting an environmental assessment -- not a full-blown environmental impact study -- the Fish & Wildlife Service failed to sufficiently protect wildlife corridors, riparian zones, water quality and the health and safety of town residents.

"Just saying there is no impact is just a statement," Williams said. "There needs to be an in-depth analysis that assures the public."

Mike Dixon, land protection manager for the Fish & Wildlife Service, said his office was just responding to the suit Monday and couldn't comment at length. But he said Superior's issues were heard and given complete consideration during the public comment period of the last few months.

"I do feel we adequately addressed their concerns in the environmental assessment," he said.

The wildlife agency rejected a competing bid from Golden, which wanted to build a bikeway in the corridor, because the city's offer didn't meet several of the criteria laid out in the 2001 act that formed the wildlife refuge. Superior supported Golden's plan, which would likely have scuttled the Jefferson Parkway project.

"Unfortunately, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service used the EA to justify their already planned decision to grant the right-of-way to build the toll road along the eastern edge of the refuge in return for the potential to expand the refuge," Williams said.

The trustee is convinced the process favored the Jefferson Parkway all along because the highway represented the easiest way for the refuge to meet its goals of adding acreage.

"The prospect of expanding the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge is too great an enticement to the Fish & Wildlife Service and it has clouded their judgment about issuing an environmental impact statement," Williams said.